quote:
Personally, I believe that one victim of the Whig interpretation of history is Jesus himself, the historical Jesus.
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Yes - we reinvent historical figures, recharacterising them so to speak so that they espouse the values of our contemporary world. So Jesus is a a democrat, a feminist, an environmentalist and who who knows what down the line.
You got me there, Carol. Jesus was not a "feminist". "Feminist" is a very contemporary word, with contemporary connotations. And Jesus was not contemporary, but a man of his time, two thousand years ago. We can only guess at what he would have said about our modern society. I'm convinced that he would have hated abortions, so in that respect he was certainly no "feminist". But the Bible gives us no clue about what he would have said about many other "feminist" issues. And in my opinion, we have no right to really speculate about what Jesus would have said about situations and conflicts and issues that he himself couldn't even have imagined.
But let me speak about one situation that Jesus would have recognized. I'm talking about unmarried mothers who have to take all the blame for their pregnancies themselves, and who have to raise their kids themselves on ever-shrinking rations of welfare because society cuts down the federal aid to them, ostensibly for their own good. Meanwhile the good people around them turn up their noses at them and thank God that they themselves are so moral and blameless.
I have no difficulty imagining what Jesus would have said about
that. Because I'm convinced that his own mother was one of those women that the people of his time turned up their noses at. And he himself was the reason they would have given for despising her.
Ann
P.S. I don't think the Gospels give us reason to think that Jesus was a democrat or an environmentalist.
